GOLD COAST: Indian weightlifters continued to dominate at the 21st Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Australia's Gold Coast with the veteran Sathish Kumar Sivalingam winning a Gold in the men's 77-kg event here on Saturday.
Sivalingam won the third gold medal for India in weightlifting as he lifted 317 kg in total, 144 kg in Snatch and 173 kg in Clean-and-Jerk in Men’s 77 kg weightlifting event here.
It is his 2nd consecutive gold medal at Games, as he secured the gold in Glasgow in 2014, as well.
It is India’s 5th medal so far in Commonwealth Games 2018, and all of them have come in weightlifting so far.
He faced a stiff competition from England’s Jack Oliver who remained on the second position, after a difficult clean-and-jerk round.
England's Jack Oliver took silver with a total of 312 kg while Francois Etoundi ensured bronze for hosts Australia with 305.
Sanjita Chanu & Deepak Lather
Indian women's lifter Sanjita Chanu, from Mizoram, followed on the footsteps of Mirabai Chanu and won gold in the 53kg category. The second medal, a bronze though, was pocketed by male lifter Deepak Lather in the 69kg category. Interestingly, it was Lather's birthday on Friday and he couldn't have had any better gift than that bronze medal.
Though, it was Sanjita who added a gold to India's medal tally on Friday by dominating the Carrara Arena. She created a Commonwealth Games record by lifting 84 kg in snatch. By doing that, she also broke Swarti Singh's Games record of 83 kg created in the last edition of the Games. When she reached the clean and jerk stage of the competition, Sanjita was as smooth as she was during snatch.
Very much like Mirabai, she began by opting to lift 104 in her first attempt, a weight none of the other opponents had opted for. She bettered the next attempt by lifting 108kg and failed in third while trying 112kg.
Papua New Guinea lifter Loa Dika Toua, who clinched the silver, accumulated a total of 182, 10kg less than Sanjita in the final total. Canada's Rachel LeBlanc-Bazinet took the bronze at 181 kg.
In the men's 69 kg, Deepak Lather missed the silver by a whisker. Having lifted 155, 159 in his first two attempts of clean & jerk, he failed in the final attempt of 162 kg. Had he completed that lift, he could have totalled 298 kg, and which could have forced the Sri Lankan lifter to take the bronze. But that was not to be and India collected their first bronze through Lather.
The only disappointment for India in weightlifting proved to be Saraswati Rout, who despite being pitted as a medal contender in the women's 58 kg, failed miserably in all her snatch attempts. Because of that, she did not feature in the next leg of the competition -- clean and jerk.
